Long Beach has rainbow crosswalks

LONG BEACH – Alamitos Beach, the city’s well-known gayborhood, has rainbow flags waving at bars, restaurants and shops, and rainbows in the streets.

Rainbow crosswalks along the Broadway Corridor were painted at Broadway’s intersections with Junipero, Cherry, Falcon and Orange avenues. The crosswalks were painted in March 2015 just in time for the city’s Beach Streets Downtown event.

Rainbow crosswalks acknowledging the LGBTQ community also have been painted in San Francisco, Sacramento, New York and West Hollywood.

About the author

Phillip Zonkel

Award-winning journalist Phillip Zonkel spent 17 years at Long Beach's Press-Telegram, where he was the first reporter in the paper's history to have a beat covering the city's vibrant LGBTQ. He also created and ran the popular and innovative LGBTQ news blog, Out in the 562.

He won two awards and received a nomination for his reporting on the local LGBTQ community, including a two-part investigation that exposed anti-gay bullying of local high school students and the school districts' failure to implement state mandated protections for LGBTQ students.